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Introduction: Over the last decade, the emergence and spread of personalized medicine (PM) have defined a substantial revolution in healthcare. In principle, healthcare system sustainability is challenged by the investments required for research and development, as well as the adoption of PM techniques in routine clinical care. The "Integrating China in the International Consortium for Personalized Medicine" (IC2PerMed) EU-funded project aims to integrate China into the "International Consortium for Personalized Medicine" (ICPerMed). IC2PerMed aims to align the EU and China's research agendas in this field to enable a swift development of approaches in the EU and China with strong leverage upon EU-Chinese collaborations. Methods: Within this project, we first mapped relevant policies on PM in both the EU and China, and then we involved European and Chinese experts in PM in workshops and Delphi surveys in order to identify relevant priorities for the implementation of PM in sustainable healthcare. Results: As a result of this process, we identified nine overarching priorities, each addressing specific aspects of the sustainability of healthcare systems and PM implementation, with the main goal of supporting policymakers in integrating PM approaches in the EU and China. Discussion/conclusion: The implementation of PM in health systems is appealing in terms of improved accuracy in diagnostics, treatment, and prevention of disease, as well as reduction of the side effects resulting from inefficient use of drugs. Research, development, and implementation of needed techniques require time and resources that can slow the adoption of PM in healthcare systems. The nine priorities we identified address some of the most critical points, trying to lay the foundations for a comprehensive approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recent years have seen increasing demand for wider application of strategic environmental assessment (SEA), especially SEA of major policies, as a powerful instrument to safeguard the environment during the rapid industrialization and urbanization in China. Debates on SEA are concentrated on its feasibility and effective implementation in practice. This study applies Emergy analysis within the framework of social–economic–natural complex eco-system theory to overcome the limitations of methods used for assessing regional sustainability so far. This established model is tested in the case of Chinese paper industry to assess the sustainability of 5 policy scenarios. The results show that Emergy-based Indices (EbI) are more effective to measure the sustainability of industry complex ecosystem, thus EbI approach is very useful in SEAs on policy scenarios of a given complex ecosystem. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Sustainable leadership is a necessity to achieve the goals of sustainable development, such as addressing complex global issues, preserving environmental and social balance, ensuring the well-being of future generations, and promoting innovation. Sustainable leadership in education is important to contribute to sustainable development goals by equipping future generations with environmental, social, and economic responsibilities and integrating sustainability principles into the education system. This study aims to determine the current state of research containing the term "sustainable leadership" by conducting a bibliometric analysis using the Web of Science (WoS) database. The VOSviewer software is employed to visually represent the data obtained from the WoS database. According to the comprehensive bibliometric analysis results, research related to the theme of "sustainable leadership" began to emerge in 2002, with a total of 390 publications identified in the period from 2002 to 2023. The majority of these publications are in the form of articles, reflecting the interest and curiosity within academic circles in this field. However, considering the lower presence of other document types such as conference papers, book chapters, and review articles, there appears to be a growing need for these types of sources. The bibliometric analysis reveals that research on sustainable leadership is predominantly published in the form of articles, with a significant increase observed, particularly in publications from 2019. The VOSviewer analysis of the "sustainable leadership" field categorizes the most commonly used terms into three clusters: "sustainability", "sustainable leadership", and "leadership". In terms of the distribution of articles in the field of sustainable leadership by citing countries, the countries with the highest number of citations are Thailand, South Africa, the United States, and China, respectively. The findings of the analysis are believed to contribute as a resource for future research and benefit researchers in exploring potential topics related to the theme of sustainable leadership in the near future. Additionally, it is noted that there is limited research on sustainable leadership in Turkey, and recommendations are provided for its further development.

Papermaking is a water intensive industry. The growth of paper demand will further intensify the need of fresh water resources. Papermaking involves complex processing routes. Previous investigations of water consumption in papermaking industry have focused primarily on key processes and pathways, ignoring the impacts of many intermediate and inter-related processes in paper production cycles and there underestimating the sustainability impacts. Herein, the results of a life cycle analysis of water consumption for papermaking industry in China using an extensive system boundary that includes the water embedded in intermediate processing are presented. The results show the life cycle water consumption and water saving potentials for different papermaking pathways. The advocacy of "forest pulp and paper integration" may have few practical contribution to reducing water consumption due to the low indirect water consumption of raw materials and energy for transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009-2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging platform and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to curate content and widen discovery. This paper outlines the approaches taken and tools used at the time, and reflects upon the effectiveness of web strategies several years post-funding. The paper concludes that using WordPress.org as a platform for sharing and curating OER, and the adoption of a pragmatic approach to SEO, offers cheap and simple ways for small-scale open education projects to be effective and sustainable.

Owing to the context in which higher education institutions function, models of sustainable leadership have not been applied to this area. Yet China is now the world's second largest economic entity, and higher education plays an integral role in the country's development. In August 2015, China's State Council published the "Overall Plan for Coordinately Advancing the Construction of World First-class Universities and First-class Disciplines." This paper reviews and analyzes research and theories related to effective leadership and sustainable leadership, which is applied in education and higher education institutions, especially in China. The current challenges of double first-class universities in China will be determined. Under this situation, according to two eras of literatures on effective leadership and sustainable leadership in higher education, the author will develop a model of sustainable leadership for leaders in double first-class universities in China.

U.S. and Chinese universities have engaged in four decades of collaboration since the late 1970s, but these partnerships are subject to potentially irregular forces. Only long-term sustainable partnerships have the potential to develop into reciprocal relationships that establish "negotiated space" around cultural differences. This paper utilizes a qualitative single case study design to explore the factors contributing to the long-term sustainability of U.S.-China higher education partnerships. The findings indicate that a set of essential enablers must be in place to foster long-term and sustainable global partnerships: Leadership, faculty and staff engagement, and policy support. International partnerships must be responsive to the changing needs of the students, faculty, and administrators and to external political, economic, and ideological factors. Critical to the sustainability of any long-term partnership is a shared commitment by both institutions.

Abstract: There has been much debate on the topic of whether stricter environmental regulations can promote environmental performance and economic performance at the same time. Different researchers have used different indicators to measure environmental performance and economic performance in their empirical studies. However, it is a surprise that few studies have checked the relationship between environmental regulation and eco-efficiency, as the latter is widely regarded as a quite powerful tool of considering ecology and economy together. In this study the background is the implementation in 2003 of the Stricter Discharge Standard (SDS) in Shandong Province’s Pulp and Paper Industry (SPPI), compared to the national standards of China. The stricter regulations were intended to promote corporate change from passive management to active control and from end-of-pipe treatment to cleaner production. This study investigated the eco-efficiency trends of SPPI from 2001 to 2008 in three fields: water efficiency, energy efficiency and environment efficiency. A “de-linking” and “re-linking” tool was used to attain a further evaluation. The study showed that with the implementation of stricter regulation most of the efficiency indicators (except CO2 emission and energy consumption) had achieved significant improvements, and the overall environmental performance trends of SPPI showed it to be more sustainable. However, the study also found that it was not enough to address a single indicator in the environmental regulation of the pulp and paper industry. More holistic eco-efficiency indicators need to be further considered and introduced to the industry as the next step to create true sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing prominence of climate change, geopolitical crises, and global economic slowdown highlights the challenges and structural deficiencies of traditional cross-border agro-food supply chains. As a result, there has been a growing consensus on the need to leverage digital technology to rebuild and innovate a safe, stable, and sustainable global food system. This study assessed the knowledge progress and development trends in the sustainable development of cross-border agro-food supply chains enabled by digital technology. A total of 352 authoritative papers from the core Web of Science database were selected for analysis. The Citespace tool was utilized to visually examine research elements. The findings reveal that research outcomes in this territory experienced a significant period of rapid growth, particularly after 2020. Sustainability and IEEE Access are the journals with the highest and second-highest number of publications. China and the France National Institute are the countries and research institutions with the largest number of publications in this field. The research hotspots are mainly the application of digital technologies, food safety, and supply chain system model innovation. In the past ten years, the research in this territory has gone through three stages: precise timeliness orientation, intelligent strategic decision-making orientation, and model predictability orientation. We further construct the 'antecedent–practice–performance' conceptual framework of the sustainability of the digital technology-enabled cross-border agro-food supply chain. Finally, this paper presents the potential research directions in this territory, focusing on four aspects: research method, research mechanism, research topic, and research frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific and technological innovation and ecological progress are important forces for China's high-quality development. Nevertheless, the current body of research seldom explores the mutual dependence and evolutionary patterns of the two regional systems when considering both historical and future perspectives. This paper aims to enhance the current theoretical research framework by focusing on the coastal region of China. It analyzes and predicts the co-evolution and space–time distribution process of two systems by constructing a coupled model and a gray prediction model. The results show the following: (1) the coupling and coordinated development level of the two coastal systems has basically reached the stage of good coupling and coordinated development, and the level has increased, but the gap has gradually increased, and Jiangsu and Guangdong have reached the leading level; (2) the spatial distribution in coastal areas is uneven, showing a convex spatial pattern of "high in the middle and low at both ends"; (3) during the forecast period, the overall coupling and coordination level of the two systems will continue to improve, but individual cities still cannot jump out of the development state of slow development processes. With the aim of fostering the harmonious growth of both systems at both regional and national levels, this paper proposes practical recommendations concerning the establishment of a sustainable interaction mechanism, the evolution of the industrial structure towards ecological sustainability, and the economic contribution to scientific and technological innovation. Furthermore, this article serves as a valuable reference for advancing the sustainable development of other nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic and comprehensive understanding of stakeholder relationships is the key component for achieving social sustainability of brownfield regeneration (BR), which has not been recognized by existing researches. Based on the widely acknowledged idea of social networks, this paper proposes a systematic research framework for the analysis of stakeholder relationships, with a focus on the dynamic and networked nature of relationships. The relationship network of stakeholders in BR is considered from three aspects: identifying the stakeholders and relationships among them, quantifying stakeholder relationships, and analyzing relationships network structure. The proposed stakeholder relationships analysis framework uses empirical methods (i.e., interviews and surveys), rationalistic methods (i.e., fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and social network analysis (SNA)) to analyze stakeholder relationships. To demonstrate the usability of the proposed framework, we apply it to the BR in China. The results show that: (1) it is feasible to mine the relationships of stakeholders from the social network perspective; (2) from the individual network aspect, the government, developers, government are at the core of the network with the highest network centrality during the recycling and contamination treatment stage, the construction stage and the use stage, respectively; (3) from the local network aspect, different cohesive subgroups with strong linkages are formed throughout the life cycle of BR; (4) from the overall network aspect, the highest density of the use stage means that there is good cohesion among stakeholders at this stage; the centralization of the construction stage is the highest, indicating that the stakeholders have relatively concentrated network power and loose relationships. The paper puts forward suggestions for improving the network structure of stakeholder relationships, including strengthening the network relationship between the government and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs), improving the monitoring efficiency and network status of news media, establishing a construction consulting platform that effectively serves the public and end-users, forming the alliances among end-users, the public and ENGOs and enhancing the relationship network stability. Overall, this study helps to clarify stakeholder relationships by providing a systematic framework to encourage better stakeholder engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs bibliometric analysis to investigate the landscape of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors and their relationship with performance. Drawing from a dataset of 634 papers retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database and analysed using Biblioshiny, the research explores academic interest trends, temporal dynamics, and citation impacts. Results indicate a surge in scholarly attention since 2010, peaking notably in 2022, reflecting the growing importance of ESG research. Prominent institutions such as Stanford and Bocconi emerge as collaborative hubs, with China leading in scientific production. Key themes include financial performance, governance, risk, responsibility, and management, reflecting comprehensive explorations of sustainable business practices and effective corporate governance. Thematic maps highlight essential elements in ESG and performance studies, with clusters like "impact" emphasizing critical factors such as "governance" and "financial performance." Future research directions could explore the integration of emerging technologies into ESG reporting procedures or sectorspecific discrepancies in ESG effects on performance. The study acknowledges limitations inherent in bibliometric analysis and underscores the importance of triangulating findings with additional data sources for a comprehensive understanding of the scholarly landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast developing industry worldwide, tourism demands a monumental extent of resources, and at times devastates and condemns the very own environments that are fundamental to the economic survival of organizations and the sustainability of travel destinations. The purpose of the study is to link three established scientific themes on survival and sustainability to empirical results in the field of economic decision and behavior. The discussion of this link may also represent the originality value of the paper. Departing from the results of a series of decision games obtained under a quasi-experimental design, behavioral patterns were analyzed and extrapolated to explore the terminal effects of competition trends on the survival and economic viability of organizations and travel destinations in restricted environments. The findings show that the identified competition tendency neutralized an important share of the economic potential offered by the decision game, with significant negative effects on the economic efficiency. If persistent, the competition tendency is expected to produce long term effects on the sustainability and economic survival of organizations and travel destinations in restricted environments.

E-learning has become an increasingly important teaching and learning mode in educational institutions and corporate training. The evaluation of e-learning, however, is essential for the quality assurance of e-learning courses. This paper constructs a four-phase evaluation model for e-learning courses, which includes planning, development, process, and product evaluation, called the PDPP evaluation model. Planning evaluation includes market demand, feasibility, target student group, course objectives, and finance. Development evaluation includes instructional design, course material design, course Web site design, flexibility, student-student interaction, teacher/tutor support, technical support, and assessment. Process evaluation includes technical support, Web site utilization, learning interaction, learning evaluation, learning support, and flexibility. Product evaluation includes student satisfaction, teaching effectiveness, learning effectiveness, and sustainability. Using the PDPP model as a research framework, a purely e-learning course on Research Methods in Distance Education, developed by the School of Professional and Continuing Education at the University of Hong Kong (HKU SPACE) and jointly offered with the School of Distance Learning for Medical Education of Peking University (SDLME, PKU) was used as a case study. Sixty students from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Malaysia were recruited for this course. According to summative evaluation through a student e-learning experience survey, the majority of students were very satisfied/satisfied on all e-learning dimensions of this course. The majority of students thought that the learning effectiveness of this course was equivalent, even better, than face-to-face learning because of cross-border collaborative learning, student-centred learning, sufficient learning support, and learning flexibility. This study shows that a high quality of teaching and learning might be assured by using the systematic PDPP evaluation procedure. It is hoped that the PDPP evaluation model and its application can provide a benchmark for establishing a wider e-learning quality assurance mechanism in educational institutions. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)

In the conditions of the spread of globalization processes, growing interdependence, and interconnectedness of countries, a significant intensification of the academic society efforts to ensure national energy security and independence is necessary. The purpose of the paper is to provide a systematic review of the scientific environment aimed at analysing the contents and features of scientific publications dealing with new trends and patterns in sustainable energy consumption. In order to create a semantic and definition basis and research the main trends of scientific publications on the subject of developing energy efficiency and sustainable consumption, the paper carried out a bibliometric analysis concerning the categories «energy efficient» and «energy consumption» using the Scopus and VOSviewer tools. The main question is, what are the main scientific and research trends and patterns in the field of energy efficiency and sustainable consumption? For this purpose, the quantity and quality tendencies of the scientific articles which are studying issues connected with energy efficiency and sustainable consumer behaviour were determined. A sample of more than 24000 scientific publications on this issue was generated from publications indexed by the Scopus database. The study period covers 2001-2021. On the global level, the analysed investigated area is represented by the countries: China, the USA, and India. VOS viewer tools were used to systemize 5 clusters of scientific articles that analysed sustainable energy consumption from different points of view. Identification of regularities in the developing of scientific approaches to energy-efficient consumption and developing sustainable energy sector was carried out using bibliometric analysis, which has made it possible to describe the dominant retrospective evolutionary and temporal tendencies in the development of this theory concerning the concepts of sustainable development, environmental management, and development of renewables. As a result, one of the most significant trends is a green brand and tendencies connected with developing green marketing and green consumer awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For advantage of the environment, coastal region in China is more attractive to foreign direct investment, such as Yangtze River delta and Pearl River delta. To analyze the differences in foreign direct investment importation performance among different provinces in China from a sustainability perspective, this paper constructed a foreign direct investment importation performance model based on the intertemporal effect of dynamic factors. Furthermore, applying the dynamic Malmquist model and panel data, this paper evaluated the total factor productivity of the foreign direct investment importation model by considering four factors as energy, openness, human capital, and physical capital. To obtain a comprehensive perspective, this paper also identified the bottlenecks of sustainability for FDI importation performance, based on an analysis of factor contributions. The results reveal that dynamic technical changes are critical in promoting foreign direct investment importation performance. Though, the advantange of coastal region is obvious. They are also enslaved to lower dynamic technical changes. Thus, the development of soft power is the greatest bottleneck for most Chinese provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of digital technologies, we have witnessed a rapid growth of the sharing economy in recent years. In fashion industry, sharing economy concept is also widely applied. Instances can be found all over the world, like Rent the Runway, Golden Tote, Stitch Fix, and Le Tote in the US, Air Closet in Japan, Y Closet, Ms Paris, and Dora's Dream in China, etc. In this paper, motivated by the industrial practices of fashion sharing platforms, we first conduct a literature review on business operations of sharing platforms, including the sharing platform operations, digital and information technologies employed in sharing economy, business models, and sustainability and circularity in business operations. Afterwards, we analyze the challenges faced by fashion sharing platforms by exploring the two leading fashion sharing platforms in the US and in China, respectively. At last, we propose future research directions on fashion sharing platform operations and conclude the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmland loss in drastically urbanizing landscapes has long been a research concern for resource management, landscape planning, and spatial governance, especially in the context of China. In recent years, the issue of urbanization-associated farmland loss (UAFL) seems to be increasingly recognized as relevant to sustainability. To date, however, existing studies have not yet comprehensively addressed the research gap between UAFL and sustainability. Here, we aim to help fill this knowledge gap by considering UAFL research as an example of the broader land/landscape-related literature, in a hope of informing future studies to better advance sustainability through land-related approaches. Specifically, we combined bibliometric analyses with code-based content analysis to reveal the knowledge base, thematic evolution, and historiographic paths of the literature on UAFL across China and the empirical case studies' relevance to sustainability. Our main findings include: (1) the examined literature barely draws insights from sustainability science and sustainability only started to arise as a notable topic at around 2016; (2) over half of the empirical studies show awareness in advancing sustainability and interest in understanding the social-environmental drivers and processes underlying landscape dynamics, yet few demonstrate methodological transdisciplinarity; (3) those sustainability-relevant studies either frame UAFL as depletion of the farmland resource that may threat China's food security and consequently hinder sustainable urbanization or frame UAFL as part of widespread landscape dynamics that affect the environmental outcome(s) or social–environmental tradeoffs of landscape multi-functions; and (4) existing empirical studies are disproportionately focused on 1991–2006, national, regional, and city scales, and some of China's most developed areas. Our findings provide an overview of this specific research avenue on UAFL and, more importantly, point to the imperative for land/landscape scholars to break out of their disciplinary silos, especially in the natural sciences, to generate more actionable sustainability insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bioeconomy model provides an alternative view of global economic systems by putting sustainable practices combined with digital approaches at the forefront to tackle issues such as climate change. To address this new business trends, financial institutions began to set up the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) business units to evaluate their business strategies. This paper is aimed at examining the nonfinancial effect created by the digital transformation (DT) activities, highlighting the role of enterprise heterogeneity after the implementation of Environmental Protection Law (EPL) in China. We employ the panel data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020, selecting DT and ESG indicators as the important representations of "Industry 5.0." Our empirical results demonstrate a positive impact of EPL on the ESG performance in sight of resource enterprises (REs), environmental enterprises (EEs), and polluting enterprises (PEs), but a negative impact of EPL on the DT indicators among those environmental related industries. Additional causal relationship regression reveals that enterprise DT has an intrinsic promoting effect on the ESG performance, emphasizing on the high risk of digitization process being the shock transmitters to enterprise nonfinancial indices. Notably, the connectedness of environmental policy illustrates dynamic patterns by parallel trend test and propensity score matching (PSM) DID regression. This paper is prone to benefit lawmakers, regulators, and firm executives responsible for analyzing and assessing enterprise digitization behavior by exploring the influence of macrolevel environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the global call to promote green production and achieve sustainable development, the proper use of the digital economy plays an important role. The deepening development of the digital economy has led to changes in the input of manufacturing factors and the structure of product demand, which in turn has led to corresponding changes in the level of green and sustainable development. This study employs a factor input-output nonexpectation SBM-DEM model to assess the green manufacturing efficiency of 273 prefecture-level and higher cities in China. The relationship between the digital economy and green manufacturing efficiency is analyzed based on this model. The rise of the digital economy is found to contribute to the increase in green manufacturing efficiency, albeit with a non-linear “inverted U-shaped” trend. At the same time, the current level of digital economy development is slowly improving but has not yet reached the inflection point of the “inverted Ushaped” curve, and digital economy development still has a positive impact on green manufacturing efficiency at the current level of development. Furthermore, government intervention is critical in moderating the inverted U-shaped link between the digital economy and green manufacturing efficiency, which has a major weakening effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In China, the healthcare financing structure involves multiple parties, including the government, society and individuals. Medicare Fund is an important way for the Government and society to reduce the burden of individual medical costs. However, with the aging of the population, the demand of Medicare Fund is increasing. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the sustainability of the healthcare financing structure in the context of population ageing. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to organize the characteristics of population ageing as well as healthcare financing in China. On this basis, it analyzes the impact mechanism of population ageing on healthcare financing and the sustainability of existing healthcare financing. Methods: This paper mainly adopts the method of literature research and inductive summarization. Extracting data from Health Statistics Yearbook of China and Labor and Social Security Statistics Yearbook of China. Collected about 60 pieces of relevant literature at home and abroad. Results: China has already entered a deeply ageing society. Unlike developed countries in the world, China's population ageing has distinctive feature of ageing before being rich. A healthcare financing scheme established by China, composing of the government, society, and individuals, is reasonable. However, under the pressure of population ageing, China's current healthcare financing scheme will face enormous challenges. Scholars are generally pessimistic about the sustainability of China's healthcare financing scheme. Conclusions: Population ageing will increase the expenditure and reduce the income of the Medicare Fund. This will further affect the sustainability of the healthcare financing structure. As a consequence, the state should pay particular attention to this issue and take action to ensure that the Fund continues to operate steadily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a questionnaire-based survey that was designed to investigate how a group of Chinese translation learners used and perceived Neural Machine Translation (NMT), with a view to providing pedagogical implications for translation instruction which is being confronted with the AI-powered translation technology. 326 second- and third-year college students, who were translation learners as well as English majors from the same university in China participated in the survey. They reported high frequency of NMT use in their translation learning as well as English major learning. Instead of directly borrowing the NMT output, most of them post-edited it and/or used it as inspiration to accomplish their translation tasks. Although they evaluated NMT in a positive way and held an optimistic view toward the future of translation career, they expressed varying degrees of worry and anxiety toward their future employment and toward the use of NMT in the process of the translation learning. They clearly articulated the needs for NMT instruction in translation courses. Based on these findings, this paper proposes several ways to help reduce the learners' worry and anxiety in translation instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soybean production, integral to sustainable agriculture and reliant on imports, faces vulnerability to international risk factors impacting domestic food security. The 2021 Central Rural Work Conference advocated strategic adjustments for sustainable soybean production amidst resource constraints, trade conflicts, and the lingering impact of COVID-19. This study scrutinizes the developmental framework of China’s soybean industry within current domestic policies. This paper uses the soybean sown area and soybean production in each province of China from 1995 to 2020 to measure China’s soybean concentration, production layout, and comparative advantage of regional scale, to analyze in depth the overall situation of China’s soybean production as well as the differences between regions, and to pave the way for the subsequent soybean production forecast. Further, taking the domestic soybean supply and demand situation in China in 2020 as the base period, while considering the growth values of soybean production under different scenarios, the potential forecasting model is utilized to estimate China’s soybean production under different scenarios. The results show that, in terms of inter-annual variability, revealing an upward trajectory from 1995 to 2020, with a shift to major soybean producing areas, notably in the northeast and the Huanghe-Huaihe-Haihe area. From inter-provincial changes, Soybean production on the left and right sides of the “Hu-Huanyong line” has significant heterogeneity; specifically, east of the “Hu-Huanyong line,” soybean production advantages are more obvious. Additionally, the study considered the actual planting situation of soybeans and envisaged two scenarios of compound planting and strip planting. The soybean production range in 2030 is expected to be 20.73–22.32 million tons and 21.15–27.55 million tons, with self-sufficiency rates varying from 18.57 to 19.98% and 18.95 to 24.68%, respectively. The research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of China’s soybean industry and its potential trajectories, employing a model combining historical trends, policy analysis, and technological advancements. Results suggest a promising future with strategic adjustments in planting structures. Recommendations emphasize policymakers’ prioritization of technological investments and sustainable planting practices to achieve projected production targets. Policy interventions must address challenges tied to resource limitations, trade conflicts, and the ongoing COVID-19 effects, ensuring soybean industry resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern bridge construction towards a higher degree of low carbonization and assembly has been the general trend, while developing and broadening the low-carbon and assembled-oriented Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) technology can better realize the trade-offs between construction quality, efficiency, cost and sustainability. In the current mainstream ABC technologies such as precast-assembled concrete bridge and assembled steel bridge schemes, it is difficult to achieve an excellent balance between the above multicriterion trade-offs. To this end, this paper proposes a novel low-carbon and assembled composite bridge scheme as an innovative case of ABC technology based on a 26.7 km-length urban viaduct project in China with urgent environmental protection and assembly demands. Construction sustainability, the comprehensive economy and low-carbon performance are well balanced by the collaborative application of new steel–concrete composite structures, the rapid assembly interface design and low-carbon material technologies. The proposed scheme has been applied to a completed real-scale bridge, and the whole construction process only experienced 105 days of effective time, accompanied with slight environmental interference and construction noise and a small amount of labor and equipment input. In addition, the safety of the bridge, the rationality of the design concept and the calculation method have been verified by the static and dynamic loading tests of the real-scale bridge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "City in a Park" (CIP) is a new concept of urban transformation and development proposed in China in recent years, guiding the construction of healthy and sustainable living environments. This paper analyzes urban planning based on the CIP concept from a synergetic perspective, aiming to explore how the integrated planning of ecological spaces and built environments can promote systematic sustainable development in ecology, economy, and society. This research employs methods including document collection, unstructured interviews, field observations, and participatory observation, focusing on a case study of the Sichuan Tianfu New Area (STNA), a demonstration zone for the CIP. The study finds that the planning of the STNA extends the planning scope of urban ecological spaces beyond the traditional urban construction boundaries, not only preserving the natural resources but also enhancing the city's overall sustainability through regional ecological services. By designing ecological spaces as green infrastructure that connects urban and rural areas, the primary sector is more readily integrated with the secondary and tertiary sectors, facilitating the integration of the urban and rural infrastructure and industries. The STNA integrates urban and rural administrative divisions, builds a cross-departmental collaborative management platform, and guides public participation in the planning process, ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of planning implementation and enhancing the equitable sharing of social services. This research provides new insights into comprehensive, cross-disciplinary, and ecology-oriented urban planning. It offers evidence for an understanding of the application pathways and effects of the CIP concept in urban planning practice and provides valuable experience for other cities to promote harmonious coexistence between the city and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to estimate sustainability elasticities to investigate how the sustainable development pillars in Iran should interact with those of the greatest economies in the west and east of the world, i.e., the US and China, respectively. For this estimation, this research uses SEY model including simultaneous equations system and Granger causality within 1972–2019 via two approaches of limited and full information. The results show high elasticities of sustainability among these countries, implying their considerable spillover effects and confirming the integrated sustainability perspective. In addition, the results show that the sustainability spillover effects of China are more massive than those the US on Iran sustainable development pillars. This result has two implications. The first one accepts the considerable flow of spillover effects between Iran and China. The second one shows that Iran has been unsuccessful in employing and activating the potential flows of sustainability spillover effects from the US as the greatest global economy. Therefore, policy-makers in Iran should consider a peaceful and collaborative relationship with the global community to improve and accelerate its sustainable development progress. Also, they should keep their relationship with China as the second biggest economy in the world while improving the relationship with the US to activate the potential spillover effects between the sustainability pillars of Iran and those of the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, seawater desalination technology, one of the important alternatives to address water shortage, has been applied more widely in coastal areas. However, the sustainability and environmental performance of the seawater desalination system are unclear. Scientific evaluation of resource input, environmental performance and sustainability of seawater desalination system can provide a reference for rational development and utilization of seawater desalination water. In this paper, emergy analysis, an effective ecological and economic evaluation method, was used to systematically evaluate the sustainability of a desalination plant in Qingdao of China. The results showed that the unit emergy value of the desalinated water was 4.13E + 12 sej/m3; the environmental loading ratio of the studied system was 5.46; the emergy sustainability index was 0.18. Compared to surface water and underground water treatment processes, the seawater desalination system has higher stress on the environment. Electricity for the operation of the seawater desalination system is the major emergy input. The optimization of the process and the research and development of energy-saving equipment are the keys to the application of seawater desalination. This study also illustrates that seawater desalination technology still faces many challenges. Therefore, it is important and necessary to strengthen the core technology and establish a sound law system in the application of desalination technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing attention of the capital market to environmental, social and governance information, sustainability reporting has become an important carrier for stakeholders to gain insight into sustainability of companies. But the emerged "greenwashing" problem has also brought haze to the value creation of capital market. To study the consequences of the pseudo-social responsibility behavior of "greenwashing", this paper takes China's listed companies as the research sample to empirically examine the relationship between sustainability reporting "greenwashing" and "shared value" creation. It is found that the "greenwashing" behavior of corporate sustainability reporting significantly reduces the "shared value" creation, while the degree of sustainability information asymmetry and the quality of information disclosure play a partial mediation role between them. Further analysis shows that the more effective internal control of a company and the greater pressure of external media supervision, the more conducive to weaken the negative impact of "greenwashing" on "shared value" creation. This paper enriches the literature on the economic consequences of "greenwashing" in sustainability disclosure and the influencing factors of "shared value" creation, extends the research on information disclosure and "shared value" from financial information to non-financial information. The results call for the state to promote legislative work, formulate unified standards and compress the "greenwashing" gray space; Governments could implement mandatory disclosure, implement independent authentication and strengthen "greenwashing" social supervision; Companies should strengthen capacity building and improve the "greenwashing" governance mechanism with the help of digital empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a perspective on the potential of Chinese ecological agriculture to address sustainable human–environmental interactions. As Chinese agriculture is increasingly challenged by the constraints of population, resources and environment emerging from its modern development, it is imperative to explore a sustainable agricultural paradigm that could accommodate economic and socio-cultural needs within an already stressed natural resource base. The rise of ecological agriculture is suggested as a workable alternative that has the potential to mitigate negative impacts of modern conventional agriculture and at the same time, to overcome limitations of traditional agriculture in meeting the needs of China''s growing population. Ecological agriculture represents a site-specific manifestation of the application of ecological economics, among others, to agricultural practices. Some challenges being experienced in translating this rhetoric into practice are identified and discussed. Highlighted is the view that sustainable agricultural development is meaningful only when it is tailored to specific ecological, economic, political and socio-cultural settings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Green residences have enormous potential for energy savings, emission reduction, and other comprehensive benefits, and their growth is crucial to achieving China's carbon neutrality and carbon peaking targets. Nevertheless, at the moment, the national green residence is impacted by complicated factors at several levels, including government agencies, green residence builders, and green residence consumers, which results in the low-quality development of domestic green residences overall. As of 2020, 94% of all labeled green residences are design-label residences that can only be achieved during the design stage, while less than 10% are operational-label residences with stronger energy and emission-saving benefits. This causes the phenomenon of "green residences on the planning" to be serious. In order to accomplish the promotion of high-quality development of green residences and to promote green residences in China, this paper analyzes the influencing factors of green residence promotion from the multi-level perspective of macro-landscape signals, meso-collective agent green residences, and micro-individual agent consumers, based on the multi-level perspective (MLP) framework of sustainability theory. The paper subsequently builds a simulation model of green residence promotion using the agent-based system dynamics modeling method. Additionally, Jiangsu Province's green residence promotion data are chosen for analogue simulation experiments, and the simulation results are also used to analyze the success conditions as well as the path to green residence promotion. This study demonstrates that (1) the agent-based simulation model of dynamics for the green residence promotion system has high reference value for the simulation of the promotion of green residences, and the model can clearly simulate the impact of micro-individual agent–consumer factors on the promotion of green residences; (2) in order to promote green residences, exterior landscape signals must be continuously improved; the stronger the landscape signals, the quicker the development of operationally labeled green residences; (3) priority is given to the development of two-star design-labeled green residences before 2035, and three-star operationally labeled residences will occupy the majority of the market after 2040. Meanwhile, the duration of landscape signals and the change in behavioral preferences of individual agents must be maintained for a long time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the integrated model of Super-SBM model, spatial Durbin model (SDM) and Grey neural network model, this paper analyzes the panel data of various provinces in China from multiple angles and dimensions. It was found that there were significant differences in eco-efficiency between organic rice production and conventional rice production. The response of organic rice to climate change, the spatial distribution of ecological and economic benefits and the impact on carbon emission were analyzed. The results showed that organic rice planting not only had higher economic benefits, but also showed a rising trend of ecological benefits and a positive feedback effect. This finding highlights the importance of organic rice farming in reducing carbon emissions. Organic rice farming effectively reduces greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide and methane, by improving soil management and reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides. This has important implications for mitigating climate change and promoting soil health and biodiversity. With the acceleration of urbanization, the increase of organic rice planting area shows the trend of organic rice gradually replacing traditional rice cultivation, further highlighting the potential of organic agriculture in emission reduction, environmental protection and sustainable agricultural production. To this end, it is recommended that the Government implement a diversified support strategy to encourage technological innovation, provide guidance and training, and raise public awareness and demand for organic products. At the same time, private sector participation is stimulated to support the development of organic rice cultivation through a public-private partnership model. Through these measures, further promote organic rice cultivation, achieve the dual goals of economic benefits and environmental benefits, and effectively promote the realization of double carbon emission reduction targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organization's sustainability performance is influenced by its suppliers' sustainability performance. This relationship makes sustainable supplier development a strategic competitive option for a buyer or focal organization. When considering sustainable supplier development practices (SSDPs) adoption, organizations have to balance and consider their limited financial resources and operational constraints. It becomes necessary to both select the best SSDPs set and investment allocation among the selected SSDP set such that the organization can maximize overall sustainability performance level. In this paper, an integrated formal modeling methodology using DEMATEL, the NK model, and multi-objective linear programming model is used support this objective. The proposed methodology is evaluated in a practical sustainable supply chain field study of an equipment manufacturing company in China. Through case study, we found that the interdependency among SSDPs must be considered in SSDPs selection and investment allocation problem. Theoretical, managerial and methodology implications, conclusions, and directions for future research are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The sustainable development of China's food system is an essential requirement for realizing the digital transformation of agriculture and rural areas and the main target for the big release of agricultural and rural digitalization dividends and the scale of feedback. What are the current trends of change in China's agricultural and rural digitization and sustainable development of the food system? Have they achieved a high level of coordinated development? What are the factors constraining their coordinated development? Methods: This work is based on 30 Chinese provincial administrative areas from 2011 to 2020. We adopt the entropy weight method to calculate the comprehensive development index of the agricultural and rural digitization and food system sustainability, respectively. The coupling degree and coupling coordination degree of the two systems are calculated by applying the coupling coordination degree model. The obstacle degree model was used to diagnose the obstacles constraining the coupling and coordinated development of the coupled systems. Results: This study found that the development index of China's provincial agricultural and rural digitization and food system sustainability increased gradually from 2011 to 2020. The coupling of the two systems is mainly in the high-level coupling stage, but the coupling coordination degree is primarily in the low and medium coupling coordination intervals. These results are heterogeneous across China's four geographic regions: east, center, west, and northeast. The level of rural digital platform construction and rural digital industrialization is the most essential indicator-level and element-level barriers to agricultural and rural digitalization, respectively. Per capita food possession and food stability are, respectively, the most critical indicator-level and elementlevel barriers to the food system sustainability. Discussion: The research in this work contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary trends in agriculture and rural digitalization and the food system sustainability in the country as a whole and within the country. Although the two systems have not achieved a high level of coordinated development, the coupling degree and coupled coordination degree show a positive feedback relationship. The analysis of the obstacle factors helps to recognize the main bottlenecks constraining the coupled and coordinated development of the systems at a more specific level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental regulation would often limit production, causing conflicts between environmental protection and industrial development. The fundamental reason is the weak compatibility between environmental regulation goals and pig production goals. In order to improve the compatibility, this paper analysed how the herd structure adjusts the impact of environmental regulation on pig production based on the rational theory on small farmer. With the use of inter-provincial panel data from 2008 to 2020 in China, a dual moderation effect model is constructed for the empirical analysis. The results show that: (1) Strengthening environmental regulation would inhibit pig production. (2) Herb structure not only affects pig production directly, but also the nonlinear impact of environmental regulation on pig production, which would be used as a specific guideline to improve the compatibility. (3) Moderate adjustment on herb structure would help to weaken the inhibitory effect of environmental regulation on pig production and realize the sustainable development of the pig industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital economy is a great route to promote the efficient utilization of natural resources and promote sustainability due to its high-tech, rapid growth, extensive penetration, deep integration and other characteristics. Existing study on the influencing factors of the digital economy is not deep enough and lacks the analysis on the relationship structure of factors influencing the digital economy, which is not conducive for an overall grasp of the digital economy. To correctly understand how to better develop the digital economy, this paper studies its influencing factors and the relationships between them. Based on the time-series data of China from 2002 to 2018, grey correlation analysis was applied to calculate the correlation between these influencing factors and the digital economy, and determine the major influencing factors of digital economy development in China. The Granger causality test and a review of existing research were used to judge the interrelationship of various factors. The interpretative structure model was utilized to determine the relationship structure of the main factors affecting the development of China's digital economy. The results show that the number of digital talents, state of the technology market, and degree of digitalization are direct influencing factors of the digital economy. The results help to better understand the development of the digital economy and will enable the implementation of policies to improve towards more sustainable cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical investigation into the effects of energy transition and digitization on carbon dioxide emissions, serving as a proxy for environmental sustainability, across 28 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2021. Utilizing both static and dynamic regression analyses, the study reveals a significant driving effect of the energy transition on environmental sustainability, primarily through a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Notably, this influence is more pronounced in the eastern region of China, followed by the central and western regions, indicating regional heterogeneity in the impact of the energy transition. Furthermore, digitization is found to have a substantial moderating effect, enhancing energy conservation and emission reductions. As digitization progresses, its capability to diminish the impact of energy transitions on carbon dioxide emissions becomes more apparent, particularly in the eastern region, while this effect is less marked in central and western China. The study also delves into the nonlinear relationship between energy transitions and carbon dioxide emissions, discovering that increased levels of digitization can exacerbate the negative effects of energy transitions on emissions. These findings offer valuable insights into the dynamics of energy transition and digitalization, highlighting their crucial roles in shaping environmental sustainability in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's urban commercial banks are more likely to face risks with the rapid development of Internet finance. However, few studies unfold the impact of Internet finance on the risk-taking level of urban commercial banks and explore their role path in depth. To study the relationship between the two and their path of action, this paper takes 62 city commercial banks in China from 2011 to 2020 as research objects and makes empirical tests by Stata. The intermediary effect model is used to study its impact path from the perspectives of assets, liabilities, and intermediate services. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Internet finance aggravates the risk-taking of urban commercial banks; (2) This effect shows heterogeneity in listed and nonlisted, trans-region and non-trans-region urban commercial banks; (3) Net interest margin, debt structure, and non-interest income show the mediating effect when Internet finance affects the risk-taking of urban commercial banks. The results are beneficial for urban commercial banks to change their business strategies with their characteristics and achieve sustainable and healthy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural ecological capital investment aims to achieve the coordinated and sustainable development of agricultural and rural ecology, economy, and society through a series of inputs to a specific range of agricultural ecological resources, ecological environment, and ecological service capacity. Based on the macro data of 31 provinces (including autonomous regions and municipalities) in China, this paper uses coupling coordination and linear regression models to study the impact of agricultural ecological capital investment on green circular economy development. At the same time, considering the differences between active and passive investment, their impacts on green circular economy development are discussed, respectively. The empirical conclusions are as follows. First, agricultural ecological capital investment plays a significant role in promoting the development of the green circular economy on the whole, but the roles of active investment and passive investment are different. Second, agricultural ecological capital investment positively impacts the development of the green circular economy by increasing green inventions and promoting green credit index. Third, the impacts mechanisms of active and passive investment have on green circular economy are different. Fourth, the impact of agricultural ecological capital investment on the green circular economy is regionally heterogeneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agglomeration of the industry significantly impacts economic performance and environmental sustainability. In line with its strategic context of striving to achieve carbon reduction targets, China is making efforts to optimize the producer services landscape to reduce carbon emissions. Understanding the spatial correlation between industrial agglomeration and carbon emissions is particularly crucial against this background. Based on POI and remote sensing data of China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), the paper adopts the mean nearest neighbor analysis, kernel density analysis, and standard deviation ellipse to portray the agglomeration of producer services. Then uses Moran's I to present the spatial distribution characteristics of carbon emissions. Accordingly, the spatial heterogeneity of producer services agglomeration and carbon emissions is showed using the Geographic detector so as to provide strong support for industrial structure optimization and sustainable development. Here are some of the conclusions drawn from the study: (1) Producer services are a significant state of agglomeration in the provincial capitals and some central cities, with similar agglomeration patterns. (2) Carbon emissions exhibits significant spatial aggregation characteristics, with the spatial distribution pattern of "High west–Low east". (3) Wholesale and retail services industry is the primary risk factor that causes spatial differentiation of carbon emission intensity, "leasing and business services industry-wholesale and retail services industry" is the key interaction factor of the spatial differentiation. (4) Carbon emissions shows a downward trend followed by an upward trend as producer services agglomeration increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation is considered an important way to promote low-carbon society formation and the sustainable development of environmental engineering. However, few quantitative studies have focused on the impact of intellectual property rights (IPR) on firm green innovation (FGI). This paper constructs a quasi-natural experiment based on the IPR pilot city policy in China. We empirically investigated the influence of IPR policy on FGI using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model and Chinese listed company data from 2007 to 2020. The findings of this research are as follows: (1) IPR policy significantly promotes FGI, and its effectiveness is confirmed by a variety of robustness tests. (2) The IPR policy supports both green product and green process innovation, with a stronger effect on green product innovation. (3) The IPR policy encourages green independent R&D but has little influence on green joint R&D. (4) The IPR policy promotes FGI with a high knowledge intensity, state-owned enterprises, and firms in key city groups. (5) The IPR policy supports FGI primarily via two institutional channels: increasing R&D investment and easing financing constraints. This paper broadens the study of green innovation city policy and FGI development, offering new perspectives for achieving social and environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]